From Our Readers: The Art of Not Letting Go

For the pains of yesterday still scar me. I know very well that should be old news, but the memory incessantly resurrects itself in me. The knowledge of you having shared every bit of your person with another pains me so. Sometimes I blame the workings of my imagination for grinding on my soul until my heart is left hollow.

For why must I relentlessly torture myself with images and allow it to burn in my brain until I am left dead and dry? For why must I answer negativity's knock on the door and welcome it with open arms, knowing very well that I am risking our humble home? Is it so wrong that I feel this way? Is it so wrong to feel at all?

I never expected any skeletons in your closet, and now it has left me fighting an inner conflict with myself—a battle I never signed up for. Why must I let the past overshadow the long list of good that I see in you now? For one second, I am completely taken by you, yet once I crawl out of our own little universe that I have willingly immersed myself in, the pain comes rushing like a tidal wave and pushes me back in into a hole filled with my deep inner despair which further engulfs me into a black abyss in my mind. For in that moment I consider letting it all burn to ashes—everything we have built and everything that we stand for.

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Must I allow time to work on my wounds? For I fear that nothing would change, and that the scars will always remain, ready to constantly tear my heart out. Considering this, it would heavily take a toll on that future we have promised one another. If I let our memories die today, the aftermath scares me to death and I would be unprepared just yet.

I would not be the same person ever again. I would not laugh the same laugh, nor smile the same smile. I would never share the same dreams with anyone else. Everything would be different. I would be different. Would I be able to burn the bridges we have built down to the paths we have paved together and watch everything collapse into ruins? Could my heart possibly handle all the suffering from tearing it all down? Or could it only suffer for another purpose? If not letting go means enduring all the pains from your past, then would we still be worth fighting for?